An Approach to Life

thanks.

Broad question.

A business risk assessment approach is supposed to require the auditor to develop a working understanding of their client’s business, the classes of transactions and account characteristics sufficient to develop an approach to address the risky assertions (completeness, accuracy, existence, etc…) and reduce their audit risk.

The reality – most audit firms pay lip-service to the new standards by developing mountains of checklists that their least experienced people fill out and they change very little about their overall approach. You can spot them immediately if they say that the new standards increased the cost of their audits by 5,10,15, 25+%. I adopted the standards three years ago (before I was required to) and it cut hours by focusing efforts to where efforts deserve to go.

Sorry to come off preachy but those firms give the rest of us a bad name.

I appreciate everyone’s input but I am trying to get some specifics along the lines of a business plan and other stuff like that.

There are many bankers. Just approach one and see what happens. Maybe even record what’s being said.
Based on what happens and what you learn from it, approach a second one, rinse and repeat till you run out of bankers.

I want to start a business and I am simply wondering who to ask, for advise and such.

It depends on who you talk to and how the person understands your business. I’ve had good experience and bad experience, for example, with SCORE — good when the person I talked to was able to give me great marketing tips; and bad when the person I talked did not understand Web marketing.

My suggestion is to talk to various organizations/people and pick their brains and see which one can better steer you to your objectives.

Here are some places that you can try and where you can find a mentor:

- Government Mentoring Programs such as SBDCs, which works with community colleges and local business development councils to offer mentoring programs http://www.sba.gov/sbdc/sbdcnear.html ; or the Women’s Network for Entrepreneurial Training http://www.sba.gov/womeninbusiness/wnet_roundtables.html

- Volunteer programs such as SCORE http://www.score.org which is composed of mostly retired executives and entrepreneurs

- Formal mentoring programs such as Athena Foundation http://www.athenafoundation.org/programs/globallinks.html , Helzberg Entrepreneurial Mentoring Program http://www.helzbergmentoring.org/HEMP/ , or The Aspen Institute MicroMentor Program http://www.micromentor.org

- Professional organizations such as the National Women’s Business Council http://www.nwbc.gov/Mentoring/programs.html

- Industry and trade associations

- Local business groups, such as the chamber of commerce

- Local chapters of business groups

Find out who his record label is and contact them, thats all I can suggest

Find out who his record label is and contact them, thats all I can suggest

Well I am working on a project, and I need to get my donation box for a good cause in the locations of local businesses but my question is how the heck do i approach these business owners and ask them to place a donation box in their office?

any suggestions !?

I agree about holding the box in your hand. Let them see it. Explain to them what the good cause is and how long you would like to have the box in their office and then ask if that would be okay with them.

Most likely a very difficult question to answer but I would like to see what kind of answers it would drag up….

It will be hard to classify the Chinese business model in either a purely eastern or purely western style. A binary classification simply does not exist, rather it is a hybrid business style that changes itself just like a Chameleon according to changing business environment. They have identified their weakness and tried to convert it into strength. The weakness was huge population and all of it have been thrown to the greedy businesses around the world as underpaid and overworked force of blue collar workers who are ready to work all day long into sweatshops.

China does not consider its business as business as business, it considers it as an asymmetric warfare that it is waging on other nations. There is no scope of law and ethics in this warfare. There are laws for contract labors, but it conveniently ignores it. There are laws for Intellectual Property Rights, but any successful product is reverse engineered and cheap fakes are mass produced simply because the end consumer is not concerned with how the product was manufactured, she is concerned with the convenience aspect.

China has deftly used its foreign policy of "not interfering in internal affairs of other nations" to gain privileged treatment from rogue nations and tried to secure raw materials for its industries. One can go on. China’s business model is devoid of any ethical or moral standards as the recent melamine episode has amply shown. It is a war that China is waging if the civilized world will ever care to note.

I own a Security Guard business in which provides Patrol service to Clients. This means I have really no assets except for the equipment we need. It was suggested to talk to smaller banks.

The bank is interested in 2 things. First, they want to make sure they aren’t at risk of loosing their money. Second, they want to make money on the loan in the form of interest.

The second part of that (interest) is automatic, they will only offer loans that have enough interest for them to make money. You need to address the first part: the risk to the bank.

Show them that there is no risk of default. Show them how much money your company has in the bank. Show them your track record and income statements to prove that you have a well-established business with a good client base. And show them how you intend to use the money from the loan to grow your business. The other thing that many banks look for is personal investment. For example, if you are going to invest $40,000 to grow your business, the bank wants to see some of that money come out of your own pocket. This proves that you are serious about the plan and because you have something at stake too, you will be more likely to do whatever it takes to make your plan successful. The bottom line is that you need to prove to the bank that this loan is a low-risk investment for them.

(a) Find a good web designer.
(b) If you’re doing it yourself, take colour into consideration i.e. a financial services site should have the colour blue or gold in it to reflect responsibility and wealth.
(c) Select your information carefully and prioritise its importance. Most important info should be predominant.
(d) Identify the purpose of the site i.e. is it to generate new business or provide information only. Gear your site towards the main purpose.
(e) Use plain English. Concise and clear paragraphs. Make the site logical i.e. easy to navigate around.
(f) Always provide contact info on every page. Gear your viewer towards contacting you.
(g) Contact other businesses with similar interests and request that your weblink is put up on their site.
(h) Shop around for promotional offers on web hosting. Prices vary, services are almost identical.

Good luck in your business.

Okay – you are done your business plan. Now who do you show it to from whom you can obtain the requisite financing?
Specifically, the funding will go toward film/music production – thus who are the appropriate investors to approach? Especially if the producers are relatively unknown?

If your credit is questionable, or you want more dough than a bank might give you-or its higher risk than a bank will allow-go to a venture capatalist-get their provisions to the deal, then take it to an attorney to make sure the provisions are fair and equitable-and have a conrtract looked at by him/her. If need for ALOT of money is not in your scheme, or your credit is solid, and your plan solid (in the banks opinion) and you also have collateral….a bank would be a better venue for better rates.